The boat pushed out into the middle of the stream and was soon hidden by the darkness from the eyes of the women on the bank.

The convent bells were soon heard tolling after the fugitives:  Paula and Pulcheria were pulling them.  There was not a breath of air; not enough even to fill the small sail of the seaward-bound boat; but the rowers pulled with all their might and the vessel glided northward.  The captain stood at the prow with his pole; sounding the current:  his brother, no less skilled, took the helm.—­The shallowness of the water made navigation very difficult, and those who knew the river best might easily run aground on unexpected shoals or newly-formed mud-drifts.  The moon had scarcely risen when the boat was stranded at a short distance below Fostat, and the men had to go overboard to push it off to an accompaniment of loud singing which, as it were, welded their individual wills and efforts into one.  Thus it was floated off again; but such delays were not unfrequent till they reached Letopolis, where the Nile forks, and where they hoped to steal past the toll-takers unobserved.  Almost against their expectation, the large boat slipped through under the heavy mist which rises from the waters before sunrise, and the captain and crew, steering down the Phatmetic branch of the river with renewed spirit, ascribed their success to the intercession of the pious sisters.

By daylight it was easier to avoid the sand-banks; but how narrow was the water-way-at this season usually overflowing!  The beds of papyrus on the banks now grew partly on dry land, and their rank green had faded to straw-color.  The shifting ooze of the shore had hardened to stone, and the light west wind, which now rose and allowed of their hoisting the sail, swept clouds of white dust before it.  In many cases the soil was deeply fissured and wide cracks ran across the black surface, yawning to heaven for water like thirsty throats.  The water-wheels stood idle, far away from the stream, and the fields they were wont to irrigate looked like the threshing floors on which the crops they bore should be threshed out.  The villages and palm-groves were shrouded in shimmering mist, quivering heat, and dazzling yellow light; and the passer-by on the raised dykes of the shore bent his head as he dragged his weary feet through the deep dust.

The sun blazed pitilessly in the cloudless sky, down on land and river, and on the fugitive nuns who had spread their white head-cloths above them for an awning and sat in dull lethargy, awaiting what might he before them.

The water-jar passed from hand to band; but the more they drank the more acute was their discomfort, and their longing for some other refreshment.  At meal time the dishes were returned to the tiny cabin almost untouched.  The abbess and Rufinus tried to speak comfort to them; but in the afternoon the superior herself was overpowered by the heat, and the air in the little cabin, to which she retired, was even less tolerable stuffy than on deck.